Ptolmht

by walrusabove

Ptolmht Attributes

Level: 5Laws: MagicPlayable Races: Human Foci: Carries A Quiver, Entertains, Infiltrates, Leads, Displays Titan Strength, Fights Like a DemigodSkills: Ptolmht Lore, Sailing, NavigatingConnection to the Strange: Due to the efforts of the Theós, translation into Ptolmht is limited. Creatures native to the Strange like planetovores, Kray and other monstrosities are directly prohibited by the recursion's nucleas. Beings that retain the small film of reality around them can pass through with some difficulty.Connection to Earth: A limited handful of gates on Earth exist in hidden tombs and forgotten acropolises. The ancient cultures and mythologies of Egypt and Greece inspired the recursions that eventually brought the Theós together.Age and Size: Old RecursionSpark: 40%Trait: Brash

What A Recursor Knows About Ptolmht

-Ptolmht's culture derives from an interesting blend of Ancient Greek and Egyptian cultures

-Sometimes the Theós will come out of their holy temple and have children, giving rise to Demigods who can shape the future of the recursion at a whim.

-The Theós protect their creation from The Lost Gods, who seek to collapse the recursion for the power it would bring, and the path to Earth.

Ptolmht (TOLL-HUM-MET)

Akronwt (ACK-KRON-EW-T)

Ptolmht is a temperate land full of saltwater archipelagos and stretches of dry desert hills. The majority of people with the Spark live in Akronwt (the capital city directly in the middle of the Alat peninsula) while the rest live in small coastal settlements. The tall nature of the islands means farmers use vertical techniques to grow their crops, from pomegranates, wheat, figs and olives. The people of Ptolmht are varied into different classes dependent on where they live. The poorer people live as farmers and fishermen on islands surrounded by ocean on the far reaches, while the higher aristocrats have an abundance of choice in how to live their lives. Philosophers, artisans and historians all live crowded together in the city of Akronwt, at the center of Ptolmht.

The Theós are powerful magical beings that are revered as divine in nature. They work day and night to layer complex spells over the interface from Ptolmht into the Strange, to keep the Lost Gods at bay. Occasionally they will leave their shining marble palace to celebrate important holidays, and to help defend the city from wandering monstrosities. Sometimes they will have children with mortals, giving rise to powerful Demigods. What these demigods choose to do is their own, but they tend to follow in their divine parents path and interests. The Theós are named as follows: Anubis, Serqet, Hephaestus, Sobek, Athena and Hecate.

To those who were born in Ptolmht these names have no significance other than those of the Theós. To those born on Earth, however, they strike a cord of curiosity. Why would fictional leakage create a recursion ruled by gods of different pantheons? To find the answer one must travel to the sealed libraries of the advanced recursion Atlantis. Early in human civilization recursions spawned from myth and legend were not common, but they existed. One was populated by the ancient egyptian afterlife and its pharaohs. Eventually some of them gained the Spark and fought wars over the land they realized was theirs for the taking. This instability from the contradiction to its vital narrative caused the recursion to collapse, and spew forth its inhabitants into the Strange. A handful of Egyptian Gods that survived banded together and sailed through the Strange, looking for a new home.

They found a recursion they could inhabit in their true forms. This recursion was seeded by fictional leakage of the ancient Greek pantheon Olympus, and its magical laws were strikingly similar to those from their home. A few were killed by the process while other were merely…changed. The olympians allowed the shipwrecked gods to stay in their marble palaces in exchange for sharing what they had seen about the “real world” as they called it. While they discussed and debated what the Strange really was, monsters were lurking outside Olympus. The Egyptian “gods” no longer felt divine with their maniacal warping and left the marble halls for the alien vistas they were fascinated with.

They were no less than Planetovores and ended up destroying Olympus. The Egyptians guided and consoled as many survivors as they could, but most couldn’t handle the loss and joined the Planetovore that had shipwrecked them. This group of gods from Olympus and the Egyptian Afterlife were hunted through the Strange by what they called the Lost Gods. Instead of living in a new friendly recursion and see it collapse, the group that would become the Theós created their own world together. The Lost Gods now cluster and swarm around the nucleus of this new recursion, yearning for the energy and power the collapse would bring. Many strangers tend to shy away from this recursion because of the sheer number of planetovores swimming close by (and the potential wrath they could devote . Although, if a collapse of the recursion were to occur the Lost Gods would probably swim towards the next large source of matter…Earth. The Karum would certainly benefit from this destruction if they were to learn of such powerful entities.

The Alat peninsula is the center of Ptolmht. Thin wispy islands stretch out from the city towards much more stable and solid land that is tall and dry. In some places the periphery of the recursion is bordered by solid desert, other times bottomless ocean. Either habitat is twisted towards the edges, warped by the chaotic influence of the Strange. The Théos do their best to keep those energies out, but they creep in like mold. If Akronwt were not where it was there would be nothing but ocean, since the city is artificial in nature. The common person lives a meager life via fishing or farming, and the majority of humans in Ptolmht live in coastal towns together. Some are hunters, some are sailors, and very few are scholars. The Théos have done their best to promote literacy, yet locked away in their arcane palace have not been as diligent as possible. The literacy rate is low, with 50% of those with the spark being able to read. Concentrations lower the farther away from the center you travel. So too do poverty rates and quality of life, with so called “ringers” (those who live close to the periphery of the recursion) only ever growing to 25 years of age.

Places of Interest:

The Broken Dunes:

Towards the edge of Ptolmht energies from the Strange influence and warp its inhabitants. One such blister on the land is a region called the Broken Dunes. Instead of sand it is blanketed in blackened shards of glass the size of the average thumbnail. Weird and warped wildlife is rare, so life is not possible even for the hardened ringers. What’s worse, golems made from the shards patrol every surface of the place, killing any who enter. Sometimes they take the shape of hulking brutes, other times insidious dragons or single humanoid shapes. They even those that start up towns near the edge where sand and glass intermingle.

Bottom Depths:

Where the edge is not land it is deep ocean. One particular region is unnaturally so, forbidding light from escaping its reaches. It is a birthing place for gargantuan monstrosities. With increasing frequency they slither and wind their way out of that dank place and make their assault on Akronwt (or sometimes on smaller towns). So far the Théos have easily repelled any invaders, forcing them to run away to their ocean homes. However their increasing size has begun to worry everyone involved.

Persons of Interest:

Angel of Honor:

Sailors and fisherman have seen a strange man walking on water towards Akronwt. With well defined muscle and decades worth of scars, his dark brown body is covered in black cloth that never gets wet. His head is that of a powerful hawk instead of a human, with black eyeliner called kohl around his eyes. The left half of his body looks burned with his eye white as milk. But instead of normal burns the scars twist into strange fractal patterns. If asked he says he is going to join his lost brethren, or maybe deliver justice on the traitorous dogs. Whatever that means.

Pirate God:

A self-proclaimed demigod of Sobek, a woman named Robiann leads a group of pirates. They attack and lay claim to any resources they find. Rumors say that she and her crewmates have plundered and slain entire villages, although the sources are not entirely reliable. A squad of guards and sailors have left Akronwt to try and put a stop to her debauchery-filled raids on the people. Apparently Sobek claims no responsibility to her being related, although Robiann says otherwise.